


Snowflakes

by Ashura



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-22
Updated: 2009-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-04 23:48:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/35405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashura/pseuds/Ashura
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(For K/S Advent Calendar 2009). When we're children on earth, we learn that every snowflake is different, unique.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowflakes

_Captain's Log--_

_The temperature in outer space is very close to absolute zero—2.725 Kelvin, to pacify people like Spock who demanded specifics, give or take a little bit for variables—equivalent to -270 Celcius, or -455 Fahrenheit._

_In other words, outer space is really, really cold._

_I guess when you think about it like that, it's not really that big a surprise that so many planets are covered in ice. And it makes the ones that aren't that much more special—the ones that are just in the right place and the right climate and everything comes together to be able to naturally support life? Spock probably knows the actual odds. I just think it's amazing, and it doesn't get any less amazing the more planets you find, or the more alien species you make contact with._

_But back to the ice planets, and how there are so many of them. When we're children on earth, we learn that every snowflake is different, unique. I'm starting to think it doesn't just apply to snow flakes_, but that each and every one of those planets is unique too, even when you're thinking after a while that you've seen every chunk of frozen rock in the galaxy.__

_But if I'm going to sit here philosophising and want it to make sense, maybe I should back up a bit...._

 

Sunset on Alicunde (1) Zeta was easily the most glorious thing Jim had ever seen in his life. The most distant satellite of a binary star, complete night only fell once every third rotation of the slowly-spinning planet, when the angle and position of its sisters obscured both suns from view. From a hollow in the craggy rockland, the landing party watched as the sky, up till now a pale blueish yellow, darkened into streaks of fire and midnight, great violet slashes across flame-orange clouds. Shadows lengthened across low peaks as the last small curls of light spiralled slowly in around themselves and at last disappeared from view, and true darkness fell around them.

"Well," Bones said with a low, long whistle. "That's sure not somethin' you see every day."

"Indeed, Doctor," Spock replied, "given the position of the planet and the fact that it happens only once every three days, such a thing would be impossible." But his voice was quiet, and he sounded less than unaffected himself.

"Amazing," Ensign Evans piped up, her tricorder out, her head bowed to peer at it closely. "But Captain—the temperature is going to drop fast, and this is reading funny. We should get back to the ship." Evans had volunteered for this away mission because of her experience with navigating mountains, but Jim didn't think the abysmal statistics for security team survival on these landing parties had exactly escaped her.

"Good idea," he agreed. "Kirk to _Enterprise_, four to beam up. Want to bring us home, Scotty?"

The four of them stood still, blind in the darkness, waiting for the telltale tingling that meant they were about to be beamed back to the ship.

Nothing happened. "Scotty?" Jim repeated, a tension under the outward carelessness in his voice. "_Enterprise_? Any time...."

Another long moment, and a crackling answer came, cloaked in nearly incomprehensible static. "I'm sorry, Captain." Uhura's voice was barely recognisable. "There's too much magnetic interference—something to do with the position of the planet at night. Lieutenant Commander Scott says we can't get you up without, and I quote, leaving a few arms and legs scattered around the galaxy."

"Seriously?" It wasn't the most professional, captainlike thing Jim had ever said, but it slipped out. "Right. How long are we stuck down here? Any idea?"

Another pause, presumably while Uhura asked Scotty questions. The members of the landing party, at least the human ones, collectively held their breath. It did no good. "All night," she informed them, her voice tense and frustrated. "Epsilon has to move out of the direct line of Alicunde-2 before we'll be able to get a clear signal. In a few minutes I won't even be able to talk to you," she added reluctantly. "I boosted everything as high as it'll go and you're still fading out."

Jim could feel his stomach sinking somewhere down into the vicinity of his knees, or at least that's what it felt like. He was reasonably certain it wasn't just a change in gravity. "Spock? What's the temperature likely to drop to?"

"I estimate," Spock began, slowly, and that in itself wasn't a good sign, because Spock didn't estimate if he could help it. "I estimate," he said again, "that the air temperature will drop to approximately 243 degrees Kelvin, or -30 centigrade. It is within acceptable parameters for human survival provided precautions are used and wind chill is not a factor, Captain."

"Hear that, Uhura?" Jim asked into the comm, still trying to sound cheerful. "We probably won't freeze to death. But just in case, tell Scotty we want a Christmas Eve miracle and try and get us up earlier anyway, okay?"

"Aye, Captain." Uhura's voice was growing fainter, harder to hear through the cracklng static that polluted the signal between them. "...all of you, be careful."

"We will," Jim promised, and though he couldn't see the others, beyond the tiny points of green and red light that were comm badges and tricorders, he knew the others were in total agreement. "Just...do what you can, okay? Kirk out." Because there wasn't anything else to ask them, and they'd already do that.

But it was already starting to get _really_ cold.

"Well, the first thing," Bones said, fumbling around in his bag, "is find somewhere to hole up that's not quite so exposed. A fire, if we can. Blankets, hand heaters, share body warmth." His matter-of-fact speech ended with a click as he turned on his flashlight, shining a thin, sickly streak of pale light across the stone. "And fast. It's easier to keep body heat from escaping than warm up again once it's gone."

"There was an overhang that would give us a bit of shelter," Evans said briskly, and her flashlight joined Bones'; the light swung in an arc across the sky and settled somewhere behind them, showing the way. "Back this way, sir." She swallowed, and a certain resignation filled her voice when she added, "Recommend I go first, Captain, and find the path. Hold onto the person next to you, and step exactly where I say."

Jim felt like he ought to volunteer to be the valiant leader, but really, scrambling over rocks in pitch darkness wasn't exactly playing to his strengths. He reached out, feeling for her hand, the other finding Spock's and squeezing lightly as his fingers wrapped around it. Spock's skin was warm even through his gloves, but that didn't mean _Spock_ was warm, just that he was losing what body heat he had.

He saw the light bob as Bones took up the rear, and the four of them made their way gingerly between the spires of stone that surrounded them. The ground itself wasn't bad, dry and mostly level, but there were grooves and depressions from erosion scattered around and the possibility of landing on something sharp after slipping was disturbingly high. It wasn't far to the overhang but it was slow going, a matter of picking up each foot, balanced against Spock and Evans, listening to her precise instructions about where to step next, setting it down again. Waiting for Spock and Bones to do the same. Watching the dim streak of light from Evans' flashlight skim across the ground. The air felt colder and colder, and Jim could feel his fingers chilling through his gloves, the bite of the planet's icy night on his nose. It was nearly silent, and that was weird, too. They'd found no traces of life, animal or vegetable, on the planet anywhere, and—blessedly, this—there didn't seem to be any wind.

He wondered how long it had been by the time Evans's hand slid out of his and she finally said, "Here we are, sir." Her voice was ragged and weary, and the light swung in a slow semi-circle, revealing piecemeal a low sheltered alcove, hidden from the elements by an outcrop of rock jutting out over it. "Watch your head."

"Thank you, Ensign. Well done." Jim kept hold of Spock's hand, bustling him into the shelter of the rock. "Let's get out those heaters and blankets. Spock, can we have a fire here, if we come up with something to burn?" It was one of the problems with exploring new worlds—some of them had things in the atmosphere that were way too combustible, or the air was too thin, or, as in the case right here, there was apparently no wood anywhere on the planet. Starfleet survival packs contained their own fuel, but if the chemicals in it were incompatible? They'd all go boom, and Jim was thinking they'd already survived this long, he'd like to keep on doing it.

"Affirmative, Captain." Spock's voice was professional as ever, but he didn't pull his hand back. Apparently affection was okay when it was pitch black anyway. "The atmosphere can support it. Furthermore," he added, as Jim drew him in closer in the name of sharing body heat, "I have determined that full night on this planet lasts only a little over four hours. After that one of the suns should be visible again. The temperature will rise and Lieutenant Commander Scott will be able to return us to the _Enterprise_."

Bones had set his flashlight on the ground and was already pulling things out of his pack. "That's good to hear," he admitted. "Less chance of me having to reattach frostbitten fingers when we get back. Here. Pass these down, get under this. Here's the fire log, Jim." With gruff efficiency he distributed the palm-sized hand warmers and thin, insulated blankets. Jim rocked forward on his heels, finding a small hollow in the ground for the fire. A tug of the string set it ablaze, and abruptly he could see the tired faces of his comrades, heavily shadowed and outlined against blue-tipped flames.

"Okay, everybody under the blankets," he directed, though they were already moving that way. Bones held one side up and Evans huddled under it between him and Spock, who had Jim on his other side. "We can handle four hours. It's only Christmas Eve, we didn't have any big plans."

"An arbitrary designation, Captain," Spock reminded him, "as we are significantly far from Earth that their calendar has no appreciable effect on ours." He was folded in on himself, long legs pulled up against his chest, his arms wrapped around them. Jim scooted closer to him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and couldn't tell if the look Spock shot him was gratitude or exasperation.

"Sure it does," Bones countered. "It's Christmas Eve on Earth. We have to go by something. Can't just go around making up time." The shadows cast from the flames flickered over his face, making it look pocked and sinister; he had his hands pressed together between his knees.

"Look, it really doesn't matter." Jim could feel Spock tensing against him, knew Bones was probably getting there too. "We're here, end of story. And since we're not going to find any woodland animals decorating secret Christmas trees around here, since there are no animals and no trees, so..." He faded off, realising he didn't actually have any good way to wrap that up.

"Really," Evans said quietly, "I can leave the trees and woodland creatures. I just want to get back to the ship in one piece."

"We will," Jim promised, rubbing the handwarmer between his palms.

They were quiet for a while after that, long silence punctuated by the occasional comment, question, or thought. As Spock got colder he seemed to care less about the presence of Bones and the ensign and leaned into the circle of Jim's arms, huddled next to him. "You okay?" Jim murmured, soft enough he hoped the crackling of the fire would hide their conversation.

"An imprecise word choice, Jim." Spock's voice was low and tight, and he might have been trying to burrow inside Jim's skin. "But—yes, I am able to function. While Vulcan is—was--a desert planet, our bodies have the ability to adapt readily. It is merely...uncomfortable," he added, with the faintest shake to his voice, and Jim figured that was about the equivalent of 'I feel like I'm freezing to death and my bits are going to fall off' in human speak. Jim just pulled him as close as he possibly could, and pressed his lips against Spock's when he was pretty sure the others couldn't see, resting for a while with his eyes closed and his forehead against Spock's hair.

"Well, will you look at that." Bones' voice cut across his going-nowhere thoughts, and he lifted his head. The sky around them was lightening, the uneven crags of the rocks overhead outlined faintly in a glow of silver, highlighting a crackled pattern of lines across the ground. "What do you think it is?"

"Moonlight," Evans breathed. "Zeta has two of its own, and one it shares with Epsilon. It must be the last one, the other two are on the other side of the planet."

"Fascinating," Spock agreed, not even trying to look like he wasn't curled up against Jim anymore. Jim saw Evans look at Bones like she was about to ask something, saw him shake his head and her turn away. Well, if there was gossip in the ranks after this, he wasn't going to worry about it all that much. For all he knew, it was there already anyway. "The shared satellite, the erratic orbit, the irregularities in the days...."

Bones shifted, leaning forward onto his knees; the blanket closed more around all of them. "You know," he said quietly, "this little planet is pretty weird sometimes, but it has got a hell of a view."

Jim thought he caught sight of something glittering under a low overhang near the path they'd come from, too high to be just another streak along the ground. "What's that?" he asked, reaching for one of the discarded flashlights and pointing the beam toward it. The light hit and shattered in a crystalline prism against the dark stone.

Spock was already pulling out his tricorder. "It appears to be...life, Jim. Plant life," he said slowly. Spock had a lot of ways of speaking slowly. There was the way that meant he was thinking, and the way that meant he was thinking Jim was an idiot. There was a way that meant he was absolutely determined not to laugh, and a way that meant he was still processing something shocking. This was a new one, though, Jim thought. It was almost _wonder_.

"But there wasn't any life on this planet," he heard himself saying, as Spock, ignoring the cold that had kept him huddled up next to Jim for so long already, rose and picked his way across the smooth uneven stone to where Jim's light was pointing. "We used every sensor we have. We walked right _by_ this thing and nothing beeped."

"Indeed," Spock agreed. The beam from the flashlight, the glow from the fire and the moonlight all reflected back at each other, rendering his form a ghostly silhouette against the silvery sky, kneeling with his tricorder in his hand. "Logically, it would seem it was not here before. I do not know if some combination of factors caused it to grow—if our presence had a hand, or if it is a naturally occurring incident. Perhaps this happens every nightfall and the flower simply has an extremely limited lifespan, or perhaps this is the first incidence of organic life the planet has yet seen."

"Wow," Evans murmured, at the time as Bones said, "Well isn't that something." Jim climbed out from under the blanket, leaving his end of it draped around Evans' shoulders, and made his way toward Spock. At their feet, seemingly poking out of the stone itself, was a small silvery flower, its delicate petals a lacy spiderweb of pale filament stretched across thin veins like frost on a window. The pulsing green light from Spock's tricorder blinked a sickly shade across one wispy leaf, over and over.

"I should...take a sample," Spock said slowly. "Back to the _Enterprise_, for analysis." But he didn't move, didn't reach to take so much as a petal.

"If you ask me," Bones said roughly from the fireside, "you should leave it here."

Jim didn't even pretend to know the answer, but from the look of things, Spock was more in agreement with Bones than he knew what to do with. The tricorder went on blinking, taking note of everything—the flower's colour, shape, and chemical composition. "It's up to you," he said softly, resting a hand on Spock's back. Spock turned to look at him, looking less human than usual in the strange alien moonlight, and moved back toward the fire.

The sky continued to brighten as the moon rose, spreading ghostly grey shadows across the sharp peaks of rock. The fire slowly began to die, the burn log collapsing in on itself, and they shifted closer together under the shield of blankets, elbowing one another awake if it looked like anyone was about to fall asleep. Finally Jim's communicator crackled to life, Uhura's tired voice sounding tinny and weak amid the stone.

"The interference is down to a safe level, Captain, we can beam you back up. Are you all ready?"

"Give us just a minute to clean up after ourselves." Jim squeezed Spock's shoulders before he moved; they crawled out from the blankets and extinguished the fire, returned the blankets and used-up handwarmers and ration packets to the away kits. He saw Spock look over at the blossom again, duller now as the sky above them began to turn orange. He thought they both kept their eyes on it, even after the tingling began that meant they were about to beam back to the ship.

The transporter room looked half-decorated, like the engineering crew had started getting ready for a Christmas party then realised they were going to be working all night instead. A garland of red tinsel was twisted around about half a metre of piping over their heads, the rest left to hang limply toward the ground. A wreath was balanced, forgotten, against the base of a water conduit, and Lieutenant Nelson was wearing felt reindeer antlers. A sprig of plastic mistletoe was stuck to the ceiling above the doorway.

Spock saw him looking at it. "I believe the phrase is 'do not go getting ideas, Captain'," he said dryly, only loud enough for Jim to hear. Not that anybody was paying all that much attention. Most of the crew was yawning, Scotty was assuring Bones there was about to be plenty of whiskey, and Evans was enthusiastically kissing a freckly boy from engineering.

"Too late," Jim countered. "But they're _good_ ideas. The kind that involve getting warm, and then getting a lot of sleep. And maybe some presents. Want to come with me?"

He figured it was because there was no real proper logical Vulcan way of accepting that Spock didn't actually answer, and just followed him.

 

_We never did figure out if the flower was a one-off, or a regular thing, or the beginning of new life on the Alicunde (1) Zeta. We also didn't figure out if it was because of us, or just something we got lucky enough to see. So in that sense, I guess that particular mission didn't go so well. _

_But we all got back alive, and we witnessed something absolutely incredible. When we think of most memorable Christmases, I think most people think back to when they were a kid, but I can't think of what would ever beat this one, stuck on an ice-cold chunk of rock in the middle of deep space trying not to freeze to death. But I do know we won't ever see anything quite like that again. We'll see all kinds of strange stuff, that's our job description. But every new planet, every new star, they're all perfectly unique in the whole universe. Just like Earth, which just happened to get so amazingly lucky, in the right place and the right position at the right time that some single-celled microbe grew legs and crawled up out of the primordial ooze and slowly grew into humans. Whether it happened because of us, or because of the lucky position of a seed at full night on a planet with a figure-eight orbit and a shared moon, something amazing and perfect happened that night. All the pieces came together, just right, just then_. __

_I guess the universe is a big place, and things like that happen all the time. Spock couldn't give me the exact odds, but he also said stranger things have happened. In our case, I guess that's right. Oh well. Here's to a lot more strange and wonderful things—there's a lot of universe left to see._

The End.


End file.
